In 2003, when Richard Grogan was on a ski vacation with his family, he wasn’t especially impressed when two bankers representing a pair of British twin entrepreneurs approached him with a new opportunity. The conversation was brief, he dismissed them.
But the twins, Steve and Dave Jolliffe, had been doubted before, Entrepreneur reports
They’d built a quirky little British company called Topgolf, a spin on golf driving ranges that they saw as a recreational sport all its own: more of a boardwalk game than the stuffy pastime they saw as obsessed with, as Steve recalls, “the difficulty, the dress code, the silly rules.”
The PGA wanted nothing to do with them. Golf equipment companies said no to partnerships. Investors said no. Now Grogan, too.
“I told them that golf isn’t a business; it’s a sport, and it’s the second-biggest source of losses of investment capital in the United States in its sector besides restaurants,” Grogan says now. “Why in God’s name would I want to do anything in golf, which, by the way, is in decline?”
But the twins persisted. With the right help, they believed, they could create something that turned all those nos into yeses—that would make the PGA come to them, attract the best sponsors and partners, and turn millions of non-golfers into avid Topgolfers.
